The present disclosure generally relates to illumination sources that generate patterned light, and specifically relates to patterned light illumination for depth sensing in artificial reality applications.
Virtual reality (VR) systems, augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) systems can leverage the capture of the environment surrounding a user in three dimensions (3D), as well as tracking the direction of a user's gaze and other information about a user's eyes. High density illumination pattern generation is an important aspect of any depth camera sensing, since high density of light incident on objects and/or a user's eye provides finer grain depth information. However, traditional illumination devices for both eye tracking and local area sensing are comparably large in size, heavy, and consume significant amounts of power. Additionally, prior art illumination devices use diffractive optical elements to diffract multiple laser beams, or active acousto-optic devices or liquid crystal devices are coupled to a light source to generate patterned illuminations. Prior art illumination devices may not be sufficiently compact or dynamically adjustable.